The Hollywood where Sammy Santos and Juliana Ríos live is not the one on the West Coast, the one with all the glitz and glitter. This Hollywood is a tough barrio at the edges of a small town in southern New Mexico. The year is 1969 and Sammy and his fellow citizens of Hollywood attend Las Cruces High School where they face a world of racism, dress codes, the war in Vietnam and the everyday violence of their own barrio. In the summer before his senior year begins, Sammy falls in love with Juliana, a girl whose tough veneer disguises a world of hurt.

In Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood, Benjamin Alire Sáenz captures the essence of what it meant to grow up Chicano in Smalltown America in the late 1960s. He creates a cast of characters that embody humor, toughness, innocence and survival—and in doing so, he evokes the bitter-sweet ambience found in such novels as Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show.

“The first thing the dead do is lose their voices. But they have their ways of making us listen. Maybe the dead need those of us who made it out alive to go out into the streets and tell everyone what happened. Maybe they want us to do more than tell. Maybe they want us to shout. Maybe they want us to point fingers. Maybe they want us to tell anyone who’ll stop and listen that once, the world was theirs, too. Maybe they won’t leave us alone until we say their names out loud again and again and again.”—Sammy Santos

Teachers: This book offers an opportunity for rich theme-based discussions. Educator Helen Buchanan created this teacher's guide to be used in the classroom. The story allows students to learn from Sammy as he experiences some of life's difficult transitions which include: first love, friends moving, high school graduation, heartbreak, personal sense of loss, issues of alienation, and the death of both family and friends.

The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Sammy’s first-person narration, observant and self-aware, affords a window into a world of quiet despair and stubborn hope, set appropriately against the backdrops of late-1960s social ferment ... His message is one of victory through endurance rather than escape.

The tough but caring family, neighbors, and friends speak in authentic dialogue liberally laced with Spanish that adds texture to the story, and an empathetic teacher and a stand against the school dress code provide a small victory to help Sammy weather the racism and poverty that fuel his emotions and his losses.

Saenz provides the Mexican-American teen with a voice that is genuine and compelling, realistic in its limitations and nuances as he comes to grips with the death of Juliana, his first love, and the increasingly complex demands and needs of his remaining friends, as well as of his family and neighbors ... This is a powerful and authentic look at a community's aspirations and the tragic losses that result from shattered dreams.

The way Sáenz writes, he captures perfectly the cadence, the nuance, of an adolescent Sammy telling the story of "the boy I was when I fell in love with a girl named Juliana," right down to the way he remembers every stolen kiss, every shared moment. In natural, lucid prose, Sáenz captures Sammy's half-formed thoughts, expressed in sentence fragments, and the confusion and uncertainty of an introspective, introverted boy on his path towards becoming a man. Sáenz' has an ear for dialogue, not just the idiosyncratic phrases and expressions that characterize the residents of Hollywood, but also the way that Sammy narrates his tale, in a poetic, lyrical manner that begs to be read out loud and shared with others, placed in the hands of anyone who's ever struggled with the confusion, loss, and contradictions that come with saying goodbye.

You will find no superfluous writing here, only the raw talk of a young Chicano struggling with ethical, religious and emotional challenges. The imagery is so vivid, you’ll find yourself searching your mind for your own memory, a similar situation in a similar space and time.

The gritty details about drugs, sex, domestic violence, the liberal doses of Spanglish, even the profanity, make this story feel like an authentic portrayal of what it meant to be poor and Chicano in America in the 1960s.

This is a moving and convincing description of the confusions of the sixties, combined with the difficulties of growing up Mexican-American and poor... The love story, though over rather early in the book, is very sweet.

Set in the 1960s, the novel explores how the counterculture affected youth from a disenfranchised but still conservative background. The prose and plot have tremendous grace and emotional impact. YAs of today can relate. Excellent for cultural studies. Recommended for senior high school students.

“I just finished reading your book and I have to tell you the truth. Your book is the best one I have ever read. When you’re reading it makes you feel like if you were there living it. It’s very realistic. I like how it has to do with love, being responsible, and getting mature. If they would make it a movie, it would be great.”—Erika De Santiago

“The most important thing I liked about it was that even though Juliana was dead, you still mention her throughout the book. I enjoy that. It was important to not just forget her. Gigi was my favorite character. She was great: a very strong girl; fearless of things. Her character just made me want to act it out: so intense, so real. I was feeling her.”—Jennifer Garcia

“In conclusion, so far this has been one of the best book I’ve ever read. I would like for more authors to write books like this. When I was reading the book I couldn’t let it go, I just wanted to keep reading it. Even though the end was really sad because almost everyone died, and Sammy had to take care of Elena and Mrs. Apodaca’s daughter. Even my teacher cried at the end.”—Daniela Muniz

El Paso Times

Sáenz captures a life that, despite its specific era, seems timeless and relevant to the current age. He engages a range of contemporary issues like addiction, bigotry and sexuality, and his prose never flinches, even when the reader must. Honest and heartfelt, this is an extraordinary book.

Sammy just isn't on the cusp of manhood, he's on the edge of an often violent and frustrating world that demands difficult choices and sacrifice. And Sáenz's lyrical prose provides the soundtrack to that tumultuous life born of a small town barrio.

Like a ballerina whose graceful dancing effortlessly belies her athleticism, Saenz writes as if he is merely documenting the lives of a small segment of America, lifting the cover for us to peer down on the struggles of this group of young adults as they play out before us.